Monthly Archives: April 2012

When my etsy shop opened in September 2011, I was ridiculously unprepared for the Christmas orders. I did expect for there to be an increase in orders but I did NOT expect to run out of supplies FOUR TIMES over because of the increase…

With that being said, this is the first MOTHERS DAY that my shop will be open for! How exciting is that?! I have stocked up on all of the supplies I will need and I have even made some special occasion designs that I thought I would share with the world, or my 10 followers lol.

I made this particular design with my own grandmothers in mind :) I wanted a way to incorporate the motherly figure that they are to their kids, grandkids and great grandkids… but that would be entirely too many names to include, so I came up with this! I am very excited about this keychain and my grandmothers love it as much as everyone else has. If you happen to be interested in purchasing this custom designed keychain for someone in your life, you can buy this keychain here.

After the incredible success of my “Proud to be a Nurse” keychain– I thought to myself… “what other job is a woman proud to have?” and of course I came up with MOM!!! I love the pop of purple in this design and I know that any mother would be happy to have this on their keys. If interested you can purchase this keychain here.

Finally, I came up with this design since as a mother of three very small children, I like to receive those little things from them that remind me of just how little they are. Everything about this design makes me feel like it is something that they would give me on Mothers Day. If this seems like something that you would like to own, you can find it here.

Today I decided to try to get some fun pictures of the kids. Whenever I make the decision to take pictures where the kids are supposed to “pose” it never quite works out. Actually, that may be the understatement of the year. You can’t possibly imagine what I went through to get the picture I used in last years Christmas card… But I must have woke up on the crazy side of the bed today since I felt like trying some posed-for photos again.

I took the kids chalk and set out to the garage (we don’t keep our cars in there most of the time and today was no different) I had this cute idea of drawing a set of balloons with strings hanging from them and having my oldest son “hang on” to the strings while holding hands with his siblings. If this would have worked according to plan– the kids would have looked like they were floating away with the balloons. Notice how I emphasized the word “if.” Instead, this is what we ended up with…

I’m working with toddlers and a 10 month old… I really need to lower the “bar” for picture expectations. I was not only asking them all to look in the same direction at the same time, but I was also asking for them all to stay still at the same time, smile at the same time and I clearly was out of my league here. My 10 month old is mobile now– there is no way IN HELL that he was gonna lay down for this picture, let alone look at me and smile. The other two were just so excited about the idea of playing with chalk that they could care less about posing for my picture.

I did draw some other scenarios for them to pose in… Here is my little girl with the princess crown that I drew for her.

And here is my big guy posing in the car that I made just for him…

And finally here is a slightly blurry shot of my baby boy (I’ll take what I can get) sitting with the moon and stars that I drew for him…

WARNING: Trying this out with young kids like mine, seriously had me sweating it was so difficult. I desperately wanted a good shot of them individually, and then all together… But don’t do what I did; Instead, take it with a grain of salt and just have fun with it. Once I let go of my expectations for the picture… we had A LOT more fun :) If you are daring enough to try this out with your kids I would love to see the pictures! Hopefully your children are more cooperative than my monstersangels were!

As I have stated before, I have a little etsy shop where I sell bottle cap accessories(keychains, necklaces, etc.) and various other items. I loved making these accessories when I first started… and then I began selling them. After some time the excitement of making these keychains wore off and I was stuck trying to figure out why. I used to drop whatever I was doing whenever an order came in and rush right over to make it, but now… even though I still have a quicker turn around than most other sellers, I am not as excited to begin the creation process. It wasn’t until I took Sports Psychology this semester that I realized what the difference is. I learned through the course of this class that I still love designing and making these keychains and necklaces but now that I am being paid to do so, the freedom of my craft is gone. I am not working on these whenever I want to, creating whatever I want… instead I am designing and constructing based on what someone else wants.

A study was done by a psychologist when some neighborhood kids wouldn’t stop playing on his lawn which was tearing apart his flower garden. The psychologist tried putting up signs, asking the kids to leave and various other methods but nothing worked. Then he changed his approach…. He started PAYING the children to play IN HIS YARD! Doesn’t make too much sense, right? He is paying them to do something that he does not want them doing. But then, after some time, he stopped paying the children. Once the children stopped being paid, they didn’t want to play on the man’s yard anymore. Keep in mind, these kids were playing in this yard BEFORE they were being paid. This is very interesting to me. Obviously the kids enjoyed playing in this man’s yard or they wouldn’t have been doing it in the first place… so what is it about having been paid to do something that they enjoyed that changed their feelings towards it??

It is little tidbits like this– that I can apply to my real life, that make my psychology major so interesting to me. Learning more about myself through the classes that I am taking has helped me to adjust how I run my shop. I still customize all of my keychains for each individual order, but as far as my birthday boards… I make them ahead of time, at my own leisure and convenience before placing them up to be sold. Before, I would list birthday boards that I had done in the past and made them individually once ordered, but this system made me start to HATE making birthday boards! I am so glad that I have figured out a way to continue making them, I truly do enjoy it again :)

After being away from the blog for a few days… I am back with a helpful tip for ribbon storage! I was taking care of some serious spring cleaning (I tend to get very messy when I’m crafting) when I realized how entangled my ribbons were! This is not all of my ribbons but just the ones that would fit in this basket. I am beyond thankful that I remembered this little storage tip on Pinterest and finally put it to use.

Simply arrange your various ribbons in your plastic basket (with slots or holes) and pull a small amount of your ribbon through different holes! SO EASY!